Theoretical and actual also contend in Julie Wolfe’s sprawling “Quest for a Third Paradise,” upstairs at the same venue. Included are one of the local artist’s “Green Rooms,” an array of bottles filled with water samples dosed with extracts and chemicals. The infusions yield intense hues that Wolfe echoes in paintings, drawings and a collage that creates a color wheel from covers of books and pamphlets.

The third paradise the D.C. artist seeks is one in which nature, technology and humanity all flourish. She evokes this in pictures that suggest both organic and electronic systems, or by juxtaposing black-and-white photos with areas of pure color. In video close-ups of water, Wolfe celebrates the organic world’s continual flux. Yet her hard-edge pieces display a parallel enthusiasm for the archetypal.

Work and life co-exist in an extraordinarily beautiful symbiosis in Julie Wolfe’s Capitol Hill home and studio. A painter, installation artist and jewelry designer, Wolfe bridges that gap between fine art and tactile, wearable, interactive art in a way that clearly is rooted in her day to day life. While the official studio space is on the second floor, the whole building is filled with projects past and future, little nudges and nods towards the recurring themes in art. Much like her work, the space is a celebration of interconnectedness...

WASHINGTON, DC — In her solo exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center, artist Julie Wolfe attempts to confront a massive question: How do we find peaceful coexistence between our human systems and the natural world? Quest for a Third Paradise — which draws its name from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s concept that envisions harmony between nature and artifice — provides no firm answers. But it insists that the path to such a paradise requires an awareness of the variety of languages we have devised and can devise to organize and understand our surroundings...